


The Curse or the Cure

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Cas may have healed Dean from the Mother's bite, some aftereffects remain</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Curse or the Cure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [de Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=de+Nugis).



> Written for Hoodie Time's Dean h/c comment fic fest; prompt by de_nugis. Spoilers through 6.19, "Mommy Dearest."

Blood and sulfur. How many times had Dean seen this in his fucked-up life? And how extra fucked up is it that he's relieved some little kid is dead instead of Jefferson Starshipping a whole town?

Rubbing his neck, he muttered, "Let's get the hell out of here, huh? Before we get nabbed by the real cops this time."

"You okay?" Sam asked as they stepped out of the house. 

"Why should I not be okay? I've just been chewed on by a thing that stole my mom's face, I've been angel-teleported all over the known world so A--" he ticked off the point on his finger -- "I'm gonna be stopped up for at _least_ a week, and B, I have to steal a car for a 1700-mile drive. Fucking Crowley is apparently still around, and then I've got you guys talking shit about Cas. What's not okay about that?"

Not just talking shit -- planting seeds of doubt in Dean's mind. He dumped a big dose of mental weedkiller on them.

"It's just, you've been doing that a lot." Sam, working the full-on Sam Winchester Sympathetic Face (Real Boy version, accept no substitutes), touched his own neck and Dean became aware of his own fingers rubbing at the smooth skin where Eve had sunk her teeth.

"It's all right, I just --" Dean shook his head. "I fucking hate having my neck chewed on." That brought on the Sam Winchester Guilt Face, and Dean mentally cursed himself for bringing that up and Cas for having told Sam about RoboSam's adventures. "Necks are full of all that tubing and wiring and shit," he added, hoping to distract his brother from the memory -- non-memory, whatever.

Bobby grunted. "That's fascinating as all hell, but cars don't steal themselves. Let's get this show on the road."

They ranged far enough from the house that a stolen car wouldn't automatically generate an APB and roadblocks for fifty miles around and Dean hotwired a black Ford Explorer from 2002, about as boring and blendable as anyone could ask for.

Dean lasted until a rest stop just shy of Portland, about five hours down the road. Swapping places with Bobby, he stretched out on the back seat to rest. He didn't actually expect to sleep with the questions about Cas that Sam and Bobby had raised, and the lack of the Impala's comforting rumble, but he fell asleep before the car was even moving again. 

_He knows that smell. Chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter, or maybe still in the oven. The sound of humming in a high, feminine pitch. A curious feeling washes over him, like golden light flooding a room in the late afternoon. He stops to breathe this in -- not the smell of butter and chocolate and cinnamon, but what it signifies. Safety. Love. Home._

" _Dean!_ " 

Heart pounding, he scrambled up in the back seat, reaching for a weapon. "What?"

"Whoa," Sam said. "It's all cool. We're stopping for food."

"Jesus, no need to yell like the car's on fire."

"I've been calling you for the last ten minutes, Dean."

Sighing, Dean rubbed at his neck. "Tired, I guess. Where's Bobby?"

"He went inside already. Muttering something about goddamn prostates."

Dean grinned sleepily. "He gives us so much to look forward to."

"C'mon," Sam prodded. "We've got a lot of miles to cover yet."

The lights of the truck stop diner were too bright and too fake, and the brunette working the counter gave him an uneasy feeling. _Awesome. Nice parting gift, Eve._ Vaguely he wondered if she'd known enough about him through the brains of all her monster babies to know that appearing as a diner waitress would screw with his head for a while to come. That wan't even taking into account having the image of his mom gnawing on him like a zombie in a Romero movie.

They settled into a booth by the front window after Sam steered Dean toward the side where he couldn't get a view of the door. 

"The fuck?" Dean muttered.

"You're not even awake, dude. Park it; I'll keep an eye on everything."

Before Dean could argue, Bobby was back from the can and cramming himself into the booth next to Sam. The waitress who headed to their table with menus and a pot of coffee wasn't the one Dean saw behind the counter, with red hair piled haphazardly on her head. 

As she distributed the menus, Sam turned up both his and Dean's coffee mug, and Bobby followed suit. "Coffees, please."

"Anyone for decaf?" she asked, 

"Hi-test for all of us," Sam answered. 

Once she left their table, Dean opened his menu and tried to concentrate on finding anything that appealed, but found hiimself drowsing over the multiple pages. 

Nudging Dean's foot with his toe, Sam said, "Look lively. Decide on something; she's on her way back."

Dean flipped the menu shut. "Coffee's fine. I'm not hungry."

"Dean--" Sam started.

"Eat something," Bobby growled. "Because I'm taking the next shift driving, and we ain't stopping no matter how much you bellyache about being hungry."

By that time, the waitress had arrived, laying a wry smile on Bobby. "No matter how much they grow up, they're still your kids."

Bobby's eyes widened at that, and he nudged his cap upward enough to scratch at his scalp. 

Dean wondered if this was some kind of half-assed tip of the hat. Must drive the women crazy, he thought, and a loud snort escaped him before he could smother it, earning him a death glare from Bobby.

"You ain't wrong," Bobby said, snapping his menu shut. "I'll have the meatloaf special, and so will this chucklehead here." He handed his menu over, and then Dean's. 

Sam ordered the Greek salad, giving the waitress a constipated, apologetic smile. 

_Seriously, in all the years he's traveled with Winchesters, and he never learned how to smile at a waitress?_ Dean would have shown him how it was done, but she was already stopping at the next table to see if they needed anything. "Salad, Sammy? In a diner?" Might as well ask for a handful of iceberg and a hard, pale wedge of tomato buried under a half inch of gloppy dressing.

"Greek salad," Sam clarified. "It's different."

Dean turned to look out the window as he sipped his coffee, but the reflection of the diner's interior was all he could see. The reflection of his hand rubbing at the side of his neck. Sam nattered with Bobby about the revelation that monsters have souls as if it meant something more than seeing yet another goddamn monster (he'll happily lump Zachariah in that category) use the likeness of their mother.

Maybe it meant less to Sam. After all, he couldn't remember her face, the touch of her hand as she ruffled his hair or palmed his forehead to see if he was feverish. She was an image in a creased photo to Sam, not a living, breathing memory. The first time Sam had seen her since he was a baby was as a ghost appearing from a column of fire. Just another supernatural phenomenon.

Though he hadn't actually noticed there was piped-in music, the second it switched to "Hey, Soul Sister," Dean turned away from the ghost image of his own sudden scowl.

"We boring you, Dean?" Bobby asked.

"No," he answered truthfully. He hadn't been listening, until doing that was preferable to Train. 

"Anything you want to add?"

"Sure," Dean said recklessly. "I'd be surprised if they don't put this freaking song on heavy rotation in Hell. They're very fond of earworms down there. I can't tell you how many times I heard 'It's a Small World.'"

This tidbit went unappreciated. "Sorry to bother you with reality, boy, but we do have a situation here. You mind visiting planet earth for just a few minutes?"

As he cut his eyes away from Bobby's glare, he caught sight of Sam, a frown creasing his brow, and Dean's breath caught. " _Shit._ Sorry, Sam. Are you--"

"I'm fine, Dean. Are _you_ okay?"

"Tired, is all," Dean grudgingly admitted. "I'll soldier on."

Before anything else can be said about it, the waitress returned with their food. The two meatloaf specials made a substantial sound when the oval platters landed on the table. Sam's salad wasn't so lightweight either, piled with olives and green pepper and white crumbles of cheese. 

"Eat," Bobby ordered, and the command was directed solely at Dean. 

Turning his attention to his plate, Dean felt a spike of hunger, the first he'd had since Grant's Pass. The meatloaf looked perfect, not drowned in brown gravy but edged with the dark red ketchup that had been slathered on the loaf before it went in the oven. Just how Mom used to make it. He remembered her taking the round box of oats from the cupboard, reading the recipe off the back as she measured and poured. For special meals she would make little individual meatloaves with ketchup all the way around, sometimes cut into a star shape. Forking a large bite into his mouth, he closed his eyes as he chewed. It was all he could do not to talk with his mouth full; he swallowed and said, "This is the _best_."

As Dean opened his eyes to spear another chunk of meatloaf, he saw Sam and Bobby's bemused faces across the table. "Dude, you have to try this," he told Sam.

Offering a puzzled smile, Sam said, "I don't like meatloaf, Dean," in that patient tone of voice that indicated Dean already knew this, or should.

"You should try _this_ ," he insisted. "You'd like this, it's just like Mom's." Dean shrugged off the inevitable refusal with, "More for me," and went back to his meal, which included creamy mashed potatoes, buttered sweet corn and rolls.

It wasn't until he'd polished off the whole meal that he realized he'd zoned out of the conversation again, but since nobody was complaining, he settled back into the corner of the booth until it was time to drain the lizard and get back on the road.

The evening twilit sky was clear when they crossed the parking lot toward the SUV. 

"We still in Oregon?" Clear skies in the Pacific Northwest is a sure enough apocalyptic weather pattern.

"North Idaho," Bobby said. "Coeur d'Alene."

Dean passed his fingers over his neck. "Guess I had more than a nap. Sammy, I'll take shotgun if you want to catch a little sleep." They still had twelve hours to go, maybe less if there weren't a lot of state cops out.

"Sure," Sam responded. "Thanks."

Despite his change of seating arrangements, Dean was asleep before they made the Montana state line, just an hour away. He fell into something that wasn't quite a dream, more an impression of physical wellbeing. Though he was in the dark, he was safe, cocooned and somehow weightless. A comforting sound enveloped him -- not the throaty rumble of the Impala's engine, which he'd been missing, but a soft, rhythmic _one-two, pause ... one-two, pause_ He didn't need to think, to anticipate the next threat. He could just _be_.

Any awakening would have been a rude one, much less Bobby pawing at him, shaking him roughly and shouting, "Hey, Rip Van Winkle. Shag ass, boy."

"Where are we?"

"Just outside of Missoula. We're changing rides."

Grunting by way of a response, Dean opened his door and half fell out of the SUV. _Soulless hunk of tin._ He looked around as he followed Bobby to the vehicle Sam was just hotwiring into life. Dean made a dismayed sound at the realization that they were trading one boxmobile for another.

"Suck it up, kid. SUV's about as invisible a ride as you can find these days. You'll be reunited with your one true love soon enough."

Easy for him to say. Dean's nose wrinkled as he climbed into the front seat to let Bobby stretch out in back. Snatching the Christmas tree-shaped air "freshener" off the rear view, Dean rolled down his window and chucked it onto the roadside as they headed back to the interstate. 

"Dean," Sam chided.

"What? We just _stole a car_ , Sammy, and you're clutching your damn pearls over some litter? Anyway, one hard rain and it's just another lump of ground."

Sam shook his head but changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been hearing that tune since we left the diner." Dean didn't have to say which diner. "You want to change that radio station?"

"You've been _sleeping_ since that diner," Sam argued. "It's not like you."

" _Fine._ It's not like we can do anything until we get to Bobby's books, but I'll stay awake."

"Dude, that's not the point."

The thing was, he didn't want to. Sleep felt like someplace he needed to be, a place that called to Dean like none ever really had. He drifted off before the next exit.

_Suddenly he's in a place he knows. He passes through a room with furniture which is oddly tall. Though the pieces are all mismatched, they're real, none of the rickety pressboard shit every motel must get from the same supply company. He wanders to the couch meaning to plop himself down but finds he'd have to climb. Goddammit, he thinks, but all that comes out of him is a high pitched noise of frustration._

_"C'mere, baby," says a soft voice. "How are you feeling?"_

_"Not a baby," he says petulantly, his voice still strangely reedy, laced with a whiny tone._

_"No, you're my little man, aren't you?"_

_Nodding, he submits to her summons, leaning into the palm she lays on his forehead. He loses the sense of the words of her soft exclamation as she pulls him up into her lap. Though he's hot and greasy with sweat, he doesn't mind her heat as he burrows into her. Humming a song that's familiar but out of his mind's reach, she combs her fingers through his sweat-damp hair._

_He wants to stay here forever._

Something clamped around his ankle. 

" _Dean!_ "

A spike of adrenaline shot through him but was intercepted by the mass of Jello that his brain had become. He struggled toward consciousness, but assessing the threat was beyond him. 

The threat, apparently, was Sam, whose hand was still on his ankle. "C'mon, man, get up. We're here."

Dean found himself in the back -- _when had that happened?_ \-- curled into a ball that took up slightly more than half the seat.

"The hell, dude?" Dean's voice sounded unnatural to him, low and scratchy.

"We're here," Sam said again. 

"'Here'? Where?" Groggily he sat up, pawing the front seat headrest. Peering around Sam at their surroundings, he realized they were parked in the miniature dustbowl that was Bobby's driveway. 

"You two were driving that fast?" Dean asked.

"No, Dean. You were sleeping that long."

Gradually it sank in that he wasn't even in the champagne colored SUV anymore, but a white Rav 4. Affronted, Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair and said, "You coulda woke me up."

Sam's face darkened. "No, Dean. We couldn't wake you up."

Dean had a difficult time believing him. This whole thing seemed like some kind of elaborate prank. Damned if he'll give Sam -- and Bobby, if he's in on it -- the satisfaction. "Whatever, dude." He trudged into Bobby's house, acutely aware as he never had been before how barren it is of a woman's presence. If Dean hadn't known about Bobby's wife, he'd never have guessed that she'd spent years in this cave with him.

The room with Bobby's desk smelled like old books and gun oil, with notes of whiskey and cheap cigars. All at once Dean felt unspeakably sad for Bobby in a way that he never had before. The house felt airless, oppressive, stifling. Squashing his urge to push back through the kitchen and out into the junkyard where there was at least some breathable air, he settled onto the sofa, trying to force himself to focus. Bobby would be handing out the musty texts any time now, and Dean needed to contribute something to the search for answers.

All at once the pressure of sadness and loss lifted, the light of the day outside flooding the room instead of filtering in weakly through grime-coated glass. _Better for the books anyway_ , Bobby always said. A long-held tightness loosened in Dean's chest, and he found himself getting to his feet once more to step outside. The vast maze of junked cars had disappeared, replaced by tall grass prairie. Closer to the house were gardens, a riot of color. Dean watched as a honeybee crawled over a nearby rose, nothing idle about the its motion as it ransacked the flower for pollen.

Dean suddenly became aware of a humming sound, which at first he mistook for more bees, but then he realized it was coming from around him _and_ inside him. A memory unfolds within him, more sensation than anything else. A vibration -- her voice -- enveloping his mind and body when he was a vampire. This was nowhere near as powerful, but it was intimate in a way that worldwide calling-all-monsters broadcast had not been. _Dean._

He wanted to move toward it, but he couldn't locate it outside of himself. She knew where he was, that he knew deep in his bones, but he couldn't find her. The growing panic he tried to suppress kicked up another memory. A big store with escalators. Mom with his baby brother still inside her. He'd pulled away from her to run and look at something -- she moved much too slow now -- and then he couldn't find her. _Dean._

Something shook him roughly. " _Dean!_ "

His eyes flying open, he found himself on Bobby's ratty couch, Sam leaning over him.

"Jesus, Sam. What?" 

"Dean, there's something wrong with you. You've gotta try to stay awake."

Scowling, he said, "There's nothing wrong."

"The hell there's not."

Bobby chimed in: "I think maybe Cas half-assed healing Dean the same way he did killing Crowley."

"Shut up about Cas," Dean said. "It's not like he's God or something. Crowley's powerful. Eve is powerful. He might've underestimated them, but no way he's in league with either of them."

"Tell me what happens when you're asleep," Sam said. 

"Nothing _happens_."

"Do you dream?"

After a pause, he said, "Sometimes."

"About what?"

"Mother." He shook his head. "Mom."

Bobby exchanged a look with Sam, which unaccountably made Dean want to tear his head right off. 

"Think she's still alive?" Sam asked.

"We saw her die," Bobby said. "But she might've left some kind of echo behind, because of the bite."

Rage pulsed through Dean, wiping out the traces of connection and peace from his dream. "You're talking like this is some kind of _infection_. I'm a helluva lot better off when I'm asleep than when I'm awake."

"Dean," Sam said softly. "You can't sleep your life away."

" _Why?_ " Dean snarled. "Because it's such an awesome life? I couldn't even settle down with Lisa and Ben without something coming after us. We've all seen our friends die, and our lovers and family and total strangers, and it never fucking stops. The way things work, we can rest when we're dead too, and not before. And maybe not then. Could be I'm just having a hard time seeing the downside of sleeping through the next apocalypse or twelve. Every time you wake me up, you drag me out of somewhere peaceful." 

"There's something dragging you to that place," Sam said. "Whether it's an aftereffect of the bite, or something specific that wants you out of the fight, we can't afford to lose you. _I_ can't afford to lose you."

Though he'd never admit to it, hearing these words from Sam sent a surge of joy through him, a sense that all of the hard times and bitterness had been worth it, that he and Sam had finally regained the bond Dean thought they'd lost. 

Before he could even react to this unexpected emotion, Dean's breath and vision seemed to stutter, and his response took a sudden, sickening turn to anger. _Sam has no fucking idea what this means, doesn't even understand how it's different for Dean. Selfish bitch. He never knew Mom, never had a chance to bond with her the way Dean had._

"Fuck you," Dean said. "My whole life has been about you want, and for once --" The next thing he knew, the dark was overwhelming him, filling him like demon-smoke. He was asleep by the time he hit the floor.

_He's in a place of almost blinding brightness, but he finds there's no painful adjustment from the complete dark of a moment before. The sun warms him from above and the sand radiates its heat from below. The ocean sighs against the shore a safe distance away, while gulls screech and wheel and dive over neglected picnic lunches._

_Dean packs damp sand into a red pail and then carefully unmolds it in its place as the fourth corner in an invisible square. Beside him his mother helps him create walls between the bucket-shaped turrets, chattering and singing and laughing. Engrossed in his project, he rarely responds, but still basks in her attention and love, looking around for her approval when he finishes a section._

_He's nearly finished building his sand castle when his mom calls out, "Look!" He looks into the sky where she's pointing, where a red kite is dancing and swooping in the breeze off the ocean. Enthralled, he watches its movements until a darkness blocks his side vision toward the shoreline. He sees it at the same time his mother does. He hears her scream. " **No!** " She clutches him to her and he follows her lead, throwing his arms around her._

_The wall of seawater rushes in, looming over them. It is black as tar and many times their height._

_" _No!_ " she screams again, and Dean screams with her, for her._

_And then the wave is on them, blotting out the sun and tearing Dean out of her arms. He loses signt of her immediately, tumbling through the dark waters until he can't tell up from down._

_Dean screams for her one last time, but the water floods into his mouth, pushing her name back inside him as he sinks in the frigid sea._

Pain roared through him, blinding flashes in the dark that illuminated nothing. Dean writhed and thrashed, screaming because he no longer cared if he drowned. This time his voice was not swallowed by the blackness; it's rough and cracked, but loud. 

Hands reached for him, struggling to capture his flailing limbs. "Dean. Dean. I'm here, I've got you."

Dean screamed for his mother, but there was no answer. If she didn't respond immediately, she would never answer at all, this much he knew from experience.

"Jesus, Bobby, this was a mistake." 

The voice seemed familiar yet alien.

A second voice responded, this one a roughened growl. "Hang on, son, I think he's coming around."

"Dean?" Hands gripped his shoulders, giving Dean a gentle shake. "C'mon, Dean, wake up. Open your eyes now."

Though he'd already lost her, some part of Dean felt that opening his eyes would burn away any remaining trace. He fought to keep that last tattered shred of her, but once the pain receded the urgent desire to sleep was gone with it. 

He opened his eyes.

Sam was looming over him, brow furrowed in that freakish straight line-dip-straight line crease it fell into. In the blink of an eye, it eased, though it didn't disappear entirely. "Oh thank God," Sam said in a rush, his voice sounding oddly squeezed. "Are you okay? You were screaming."

"Yeah, I know." Dean's voice was blasted, like that time in Spokane when he'd caught the mother of all --

He closed his eyes.

" _Dean._ What is it?"

Drawing in a hitching breath, Dean opened his eyes again. "Nothing. I'm okay, Sammy."

It didn't look like Sam believed that any more than Dean did. But Sam had to know him well enough to know that he wouldn't get a different story from Dean no matter how much he tried.

Dean rolled his head to the side and saw that he was in one of the upstairs bedrooms. The battered nightstand next to his bed held a syringe. "What the hell did you shoot me up with?"

Another Significant Look passed between Sam and Bobby, which was getting pretty damn old by now.

" _What?_ "

Sam cleared his throat. "Traces of the phoenix ash. We made an antidote, and it seems like it worked. So it must have been an aftereffect of Eve's bite after all."

"You shot me up with phoenix ash? Who came up with that idea, Cas?"

"Dean, we haven't seen Cas in almost a week."

"Bullshit. It's only been a day or two since he angeled us to Merritt." This time two Signficant Looks were directed at him. "Okay," Dean said carefully, "it _hasn't_ been a day or two."

"We've been here four days, Dean," Sam said in his Break It to Him Gently Voice. Dean _never_ liked what came out in that tone. "We've been calling Cas all this time, but there's been no answer."

The pain that speared through Dean at this thought surprised him. He set his face in a scowl. "So instead you pulled some experimental mojo out of your asses."

"Wouldn't have hurt you at all if our theory hadn't been right," Bobby said. 

Dean couldn't exactly argue with that; he'd had the powder on his skin, he'd had his Phoenix Cocktail, with no issues whatsoever. 

So it had been The Mother giving him those dreams. The thought twists his stomach so hard for a second he feared he'd puke.

"You all right?" Sam asked. The furrow was back.

Clenching his jaw until the nausea subsided, he nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay," he said when it passed.

"Why don't you try sitting up," Sam suggested. "I'll bring you some--"

Dean threw back the covers. "Don't be a dope." Sitting up swiftly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, then nearly pitched over onto his face.

Sam caught him. "Hey hey, take it easy, dude. You've been flat on your back for days. You need to take it slow, have something to eat."

"I'll rustle something up," Bobby said. On his way out of the bedroom, he paused to exchange another Look with Sam.

Sam settled onto the edge of the bed, looking exhausted. "We were pretty worried," he said simply.

"Yeah, something must be going on with Cas."

Sam scowled. "Don't be a dope," he quoted.

Dean said nothing in response, but he nodded his acknowledgment.

"It wasn't just you sleeping deeper and longer each time. It was that you seemed to _want_ that."

"Yeah," Dean said. "I did. It was impossible to sort her out from Mom. And it felt good to be taken care of, and not have the next apocalypse weighing on me. She did love her children, Sam."

"I know that," Sam said.

"No, not Mom. Eve. She loved them. That's why Lenore couldn't resist."

Sam looked dubious.

"I was one of them," Dean reminded him. "For a little while. I felt it in her voice when she called to us, but I didn't know how to understand her."

"Dean --" 

He could hear the discomfort in Sam's voice, that Dean would make a connection between Eve and their mom, even though all Sam really had was an idea of Mary Winchester as Mom.

Dean shook his head and looked away. "Forget it, Sammy. I'm just talking. That bite scrambled my brains, that's all." 

Before long Bobby returned with a big mug of thick chicken-vegetable soup that looked like it had been poured right out of a pot pie, along with a biscuit.

It was two days later before Dean could manage to polish off that same amount of food in one sitting, and longer before he could do very much without getting shaky. He helped with the research on Purgatory and Crowley when he could, but Sam and Bobby periodically ordered him outside for a walk. It was twenty minutes when Sam wasn't eying him or asking him how he was, so he tended to go along with it.

 

Which was how he happened to be walking through the maze of junkers in the yard when he suddenly thought of John Lennon. Or, more accurately, an early solo song of John's. Dean had first heard it driving into Athens, Ohio late one night, the college radio station playing a lot of obscure shit -- or at least it had been obscure to Dean. 

The DJ had the annoying habit of being fucking _educational_ about everything she was playing, but Dean had been too tired to search for another station. She had talked about primal scream therapy, which had influenced Lennon's first solo album. Then she played "Mother."

The song was so raw, so full of the pain of abandonment, that Dean had pulled the Impala to the side of the road, shaking so hard he hadn't trusted himself to drive. He'd had wounds he'd thought were scars by now, but he'd found they were only scabbed over, and the song had torn every bit of that covering away. 

He felt like that now, stripped of his skin, laid bare in a way that only Hell could match. Dean wished he had a crowbar in his hands to smash a few junkers the way he'd done to the Impala after Dad died. But even if he had one, Dean knew he didn't have the strength to tear up anything tougher than a PopTart packet. Instead he perched on the running board of an elderly Ford pickup and started at the glittery bits of broken glass on the ground at his feet. 

Dean wasn't sure how long he'd been out there when he heard a soft "Hey" from Sam. "How are you doing?"

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "I don't know what kicked my ass worse, the curse or the cure."

Silence spooled out between them, unwinding like roadway beneath the Impala's wheels. 

After a long while, Sam said, "It didn't feel like a curse." He didn't frame it as a question.

"No," Dean said, after another moment.

"What was it like?"

"A lot like Lawrence, Kansas Heaven," he answered. "Up until that douche Zachariah hijacked Paradise."

"I'm sorry," Sam said softly. "It seems like you had to lose Mom so many times."

Rubbing a hand over his hair, Dean said, "Well, it's my weakness. Probably the whole demon world has been clued in that it's the way to get to me."

"Bullshit," Sam snapped, causing Dean to look up. "You've kept her in your memory. You made her real to me in a way that a handful of pictures couldn't."

"I did?"

"Damn straight," Sam said. "You're the reason I feel like I can remember her at all."

Dean gave him a long, scrutinizing look, but all he could see in Sam's face was earnest truth.

"What d'you say we get out tonight for a couple of hours?" Sam suggested. "'Get out and blow the stink off,' as Bobby says."

Letting out a rough chuckle, Dean said, "I dunno, Sam. The shape I'm in, I think I'd be the world's cheapest date. Half a beer and I'm under the table." Even a game of pool felt completely beyond his energy level.

"Nah, we'll just drive around a while, hit Madge's diner. Maybe you can gum a piece of banana cream pie, Gramps."

"Bitch."

It was an indicator of just how scared Sam must have been over Dean's condition that he didn't respond with an immediate "jerk." Dean looked toward the reddening sun to give Sam a moment for the shadow to pass from his face. 

"Yeah," Dean said quietly after a long moment. "I think I'd like that."


End file.
